Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

Amendment No. 9, the first of the group, addresses the first clause of the Bill, which would amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in particular ways. Clause 1(2) of the Bill would omit from part 1 schedule 1 to the 2000 Act the two paragraphs that list the public authorities governed by the Act. At the moment, that list includes the House of Commons and House of Lords. The schedule contains a long list, which people can look at, of all the public authorities, and the House of Commons and House of Lords would be removed from it. I shall go through each of the amendments so that people are clear about what we shall vote on later. Amendment No. 9 would insert after ““House of Commons?:"““but in relation to the House of Commons only in relation to information concerning the expenditure of any member of that House in execution of their public duties?." The first proposition of which I want us to be aware that we are considering is exactly that referred to by the hon. Members for Hendon and for Walsall, North, from different sides of the argument. It is that there could be an argument about the obligation to disclose expenses; we could say that, as an alternative, we want to keep in the obligation to do so, but nothing else. Both propositions are unreasonable, but we have tabled amendment No. 9 because we want to focus the attention of colleagues on the fact that expenses are one of the issues. We could amend the Bill, as the amendment proposes, so that the schedule listing of the House of Commons applied only to information about the expenditure of hon. Members"““in execution of their public duties?." Would that be enough? My colleagues with whom I have discussed the matter, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes, say that it would not. 10 am Although the expenses issue has been successfully contested—the information tribunal said that we must reveal travel expenses—there are other matters to do with the work of the House of Commons that we should be willing to divulge, for example, the cost of running the place, the cost of improvements that we make to the place, information about the number of visitors and the amount of revenue that visitors bring in, the amount that we pay generically—information about individual pay is protected under data protection legislation—to our catering staff. Other examples are regulations that guarantee minimum wages, any plans for reform of the institutions, information about how many more staff we might consider employing, whether we considered buying new computer equipment and whether we had any problems with our computers. There is a long list of things that might be of significant interest to the public and are not simply to do with the expenditure of individual Members of Parliament. The matter that has been most in the public domain is the expenditure that individual Members of Parliament incur. I hope that everybody realises that the declaration and publication of expenditure has put pressure on all of us to consider whether we can justify it. Scotland has a far better and more open freedom of information system—much more information in the Scottish Parliament is open to the public. The Scottish Parliament is governed by separate legislation and has a different regime, which is possibly one of the best in the world. Evidence from the Information Commissioner in Scotland shows downward pressure on expenses. That is on the public record. Such pressure is a good thing. Evidence in a note that the Campaign for Freedom of Information supplied about expenses divulged, for example, by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, other police commissioners or authorities and other agencies, shows that, once people have to declare how much they spend on taxi fares, meals, entertaining, travelling by bicycle, car, plane or train, it leads to a proper public debate. We are all trying to be more environmentally responsible and it is good that information about our air travel—its cost and frequency—and about train travel as an alternative is in the public domain. It is therefore not sufficient to say that we want to keep only expenses exempt, even if that was the intention of the promoter and of the hon. Member for Hendon. It is not only the expenditure of Members of the House of Commons that is of interest. Proposed new subsection (2A) in the amendment relates to the House of Lords. It proposes guaranteeing that the expenditure of individual Members of the House of Lords in the execution of their public duties remained subject to the Freedom of Information Act, even if other matters were not. Until recently, I did not realise that expenditure of Members of the House of Lords in the execution of their duties has so far been subject to much less scrutiny than that of Members of the House of Commons. I do not say that to take sides against colleagues in the Lords who have debated the matter. We have hundreds of colleagues at the other end of the Corridor, and the proposal for reform of the House of Lords would increase that number in the short term even if it reduced it in the long term. Members of the House of Lords do not receive a salary plus expenses as we do, but an allowance for attendance and other allowances that follow from that. They are ““ticked in?, as it were, if they turn up on a specific day, and there is a maximum allowance that they can claim. They can then claim maximum allowances for travel, overnight stays, food, secretarial expenses per day and so on. I recently discovered that all those allowances are tax free. I do not know whether that is widely known by the public. Our salaries are taxable but, because Members of the House of Lords do not get salaries, their allowances are not taxable but are instead regarded as expenses for attendance. The number of Members of the House of Lords who claim the maximum allowance on every occasion is not publicly known. It is not known how many claim the maximum daily attendance allowance if they stay for a minute, an hour or the whole day or how many claim the maximum amount for accommodation if they stay for only a day. That is of significant public interest. They are legislators. We can debate how they get to be legislators; some of us believe that we need to reform the House of Lords into a predominantly or wholly elected second Chamber, and we voted accordingly the other day. However, it is vital that the public have the same access to information about individual expenses incurred by Members of both Houses. It is therefore proper to include the House of Lords. When we consider the second group of amendments—later today, next week, next month or later in the year—we will discuss the changes that the Bill introduces to communication with Members of Parliament. The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border is now trying to limit the proposal to the House of Commons. Amendment No. 9 would deal with the expenses of both Houses. I hope that all colleagues will agree that information about the expenses of all Members in the execution of their duties should remain available to the public and accessible as of right, not of discretion. That must be the principle.